


New Soundtrack

by cadenzamuse



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-17 01:19:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11264982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadenzamuse/pseuds/cadenzamuse
Summary: Today is not a good day.





	New Soundtrack

**Author's Note:**

  * For [palateens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/palateens/gifts).



> From the parsitive tiny promptfic fest, for palateens' prompt (although without the specific music requests):
> 
> Kent (Gen), Music - I'd like to hear about how Kent uses music to cope. Especially Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River" and "What Goes Around Comes Around (here's the Tea).

Today is not a good day. It seems okay when Kent wakes up a little late, but by the time he has fished his breakfast ingredients out of the fridge, everything is falling apart. Somehow, when he put the eggs back in the fridge, two out of three of them ended up cracked--and the peach he was counting on to make his morning smoothie palatable is nowhere to be found. He rubs the eggy mess in his fridge around a little with a paper towel, grimly contemplating his next step.

He pays for his poorly blended smoothie with a far too chipper Insta selfie of him and the Village Green Juicery staff, hashtag saved my day, smiling blushy emoji. By the time he gets to practice, he's the kind of barely late that makes him feel anxious and guilty, but isn't late enough to get bitched out by the coaching staff. Jeff always thinks he's weird for feeling this way, but Kent would rather get yelled at, apologize, and get over it than feel like shit and have nowhere to put it.

Of course, then he has the worst practice of what feels like his entire career. It leaves him too awake and overheated and buzzing with the need to bleed every negative emotion out of himself. He hasn't cut in over a year, hasn't wanted to cut since...Jesus, at least since before the start of playoffs last March. But today it sounds like the only good thing in the world.

He laces up his sneakers, does his habitual spectacles-testicles-wallet-watch check to make sure he has all his shit, and does his best to avoid his teammates and get to his car as fast as possible. He slams the driver door, cranks the ignition, and taps his PIN into his phone. He takes a deep breath. It feels like the first time Kent has breathed since opening the refrigerator door this morning.

He's cycling through his apps, looking for the meditation one--there's a halfway decent one minute meditation for anger he has bookmarked that is the only thing he can think of that might possibly take the edge off? It's unlikely, but it might. Anyway, his hands are sweaty and his thumb slips, opening iTunes instead.

And that's--a good idea, actually.

He puts the car in first and accelerates out of the parking lot, eager to get somewhere where his teammates can't hear him. He throws it into third out of the Iceplex and lifts his hand from the stick to spin his volume dial all the way up. He can feel his pulse pounding, but something's already shifting, and it feels more like the last breath of foreplay before really spectacular sex than the ugly mess it was a second ago.

The buzz of synth pushes into his gut, followed by drum machine claps. By the time the cymbal crashes at the top of the first chorus, Kent's body feels like a giant drum, beating the music through his shoulders, his abs, the balls of his feet. He pounds on the gearbox with his hand and lets the lyrics pour out of him.

There is absolutely no fucking imaginable way in which the Beltway is "on his way home." But that's the way he's going home anyway. As many times around as it takes.


End file.
